Sinn Féin yesterday lost a legal case to overturn financial sanctions imposed on it by the British government because of IRA activity.
The High Court in Belfast refused the party permission for a judicial review of the decision to penalise it by more than £100,000 last year.
Sinn Féin launched the court action after the Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, last April withdrew funding from its Assembly party.
He took action after a report from the Independent Monitoring Commission highlighted the level of paramilitary activity by both the IRA and loyalists and recommended sanctions against Sinn Féin and the loyalist Progressive Unionist Party.
The IMC last week recommended further sanctions against Sinn Féin because of its knowledge and sanctioning of the IRA's £26.5 million Northern Bank robbery before Christmas. Mr Justice Weatherup dismissed a Sinn Féin assertion that the IMC had no right to examine their activities.
He said that Mr Murphy had been entitled to draw conclusions from the IMC report, which accused the IRA of being behind the attempted abduction of a dissident republican, Mr Bobby Tohill, from a bar in Belfast last February.
The judge ruled that the IMC was within its terms of reference when it recommended sanctions against Sinn Féin.
Furthermore, he said Sinn Féin could not claim procedural unfairness when it had not been prepared to talk to the IMC.
Costs were awarded against Sinn Féin. Outside the court, senior party member Mr Gerry Kelly said the ruling was political and that the IMC was outside the Good Friday Agreement.
The North Belfast Assembly member said: "In the years that republicans have gone to the courts, they would not be overly surprised at the kind of political decision made today - and let me be clear it was a political decision."
He said the IMC was outside the Good Friday Agreement, as were the powers the government had taken to impose sanctions.
"The sanctions were wrong in the first place, they do not work and the British government should remove the sanctions.," he added.
Mr Kelly said the party would be studying the ruling with its lawyers to see whether there were any other avenues open to it.
He said: "The judgment was a political judgment, it is not within the Good Friday agreement."
He insisted that Mr Murphy "did not have any mandate to do what he did".
- (PA)